title: Automated multi-day tracking of marked mice for the analysis of social behaviour.
abstract: A quantitative description of animal social behaviour is informative for behavioural biologists and clinicians developing drugs to treat social disorders. Social interaction in a group of animals has been difficult to measure because behaviour develops over long periods of time and requires tedious manual scoring, which is subjective and often non-reproducible. Computer-vision systems with the ability to measure complex social behaviour automatically would have a transformative impact on biology. Here, we present a method for tracking group-housed mice individually as they freely interact over multiple days. Each mouse is bleach-marked with a unique fur pattern. The patterns are automatically learned by the tracking software and used to infer identities. Trajectories are analysed to measure behaviour as it develops over days, beyond the range of acute experiments. We demonstrate how our system may be used to study the development of place preferences, associations and social relationships by tracking four mice continuously for five days. Our system enables accurate and reproducible characterisation of wild-type mouse social behaviour and paves the way for high-throughput long-term observation of the effects of genetic, pharmacological and environmental manipulations.
authors.affiliation: Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. shay.ohayon@gmail.com
authors.forename: Shay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ohayon
authors.forename: Ofer
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Avni
authors.forename: Adam L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Perona
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Roian Egnor
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001331:Automation; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006197:Hair / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Automated; Long term; Multiple mice tracking; Social behaviour